What makes this convo fascinating to me is that there are so many potential reasons to explain why rogues are much more rarely played than most other classes. (And thus, so many potential ways to fix the problem — if it’s even really a “problem.” But that’s a rant for another day. :) )
Much of the discussion tends to revolve around issues of class mechanics — that compared to other classes, we don’t have enough mobility, aren’t strong enough defensively, have too much passive damage, rely too heavily on cooldowns, have to wait too long between using abilities, yada yada ya.
I’m not saying those are stupid explanations for why rogue population numbers are low — heck, I even proposed a few of them in my last rant on this subject. They just ring hollow to me, because the more I think about this issue, the more I feel like that the majority of the playerbase — as in, the people who *don’t* read this blog (or any WoW blog, for that matter) or game forums, and who just like to play the game without studying it intensely — I don’t think the majority of those folks give a crap about those sorts of nuances. I’ve begun to think that for them, whether to play a rogue or not play a rogue comes down to subconscious questions: Do they connect with the class on an emotional level? Does it feel fun to play? Does it feel comfortable, like that old pair of jeans you refuse to throw out even though there’s a huge hole in the crotch and your significant other cringes whenever you squat while you wear them?
To explore these questions, I did what any other moron on the Internet would do: I went on Twitter and harassed the crap out of people who are way more well-known and important than me, like @madsushi (Chase Christian of WoW Insider’s Encrypted Text column), @wowcynwise (Cynwise, a well-known WoW blogger and brain-smart person) and @Ghostcrawler (Greg Street, who does somethingorother with some online game we play sometimes).
The results of this harassment were the twitversations below, which explored two lesser-discussed questions behind why rogue population numbers might be lower than we’d like. I’ll copy/paste the individual tweets below; hope y’all will take a moment to read them and maybe even offer your own thoughts, since I think this is a fascinating issue to explore more deeply (and potentially come up with some realistic solutions for).
The convo started off with me chatting with @madsushi about his keybinds. He then linked me a three-year-old blog post of his, which made me realize he is an AAAAAAAANCIENT blogger by WoW standards. Then these two discussions happened. (Please be sure to note the part, early on, where @madsushi basically calls this blog the best thing ever in the history of anything — I’d highlight it in blinking text, but I don’t want to get all egotistical about how superawesome everybody anywhere thinks I am.)
Is the Rogue Class Suffering Because We Don’t Have Enough Heroes?
- @SvelteKumquat: Has anyone on the planet been (consistently) rogue-blogging longer than you?
- @SvelteKumquat: (Rogging? Blogueing? Blinja-ing?)
- @madsushi: Nope. The old guard of Akrios, Ming, etc all closed up shop. I wish there were more roggers, RHR is a nice addition.
- @SvelteKumquat: :D I prefer to think of it as R-cubed. You think they all burned out generally? Or is it the class? (I kind-of include Aldriana.)
- @madsushi: It’s a mix. Many rerolled, many left for other games, etc. Not many people are built to play the same game/class for years.
- @madsushi: More and more, the vanilla players are fading. Most of the guys in my guild started in Wrath. It’s been a very long time.
- @madsushi: I talked about the lack of rogue heroes recently. Reckful hanging up his daggers was a big blow to our role model roster.
- @SvelteKumquat: Does a class need role models to thrive, though? How many others even truly have such defining icons?
- @madsushi: Swifty and Kungen and Kripp bring a lot of attention and new players to their classes.
- @madsushi: how would a new player know rogues are any good? Who advertises for them in a public venue?
- @SvelteKumquat: Is that relevant to a majority of the folks who play @Warcraft, though? How many pick/stick with a class based on “public” faces?
- @SvelteKumquat: I’m not saying I’m the norm, but I picked rogue b/c I wanted to be stealthy. I’ve stuck w/ it because I still want to be stealthy.
- @SvelteKumquat: I played for ~2 years before I even started to browse the Web and seek out others who played my class. “Public” folks meant nada.
- @madsushi: I just know guys like Swifty get 6-figure views; has to count for something.
- @madsushi: I play Terran in SC2 because I saw Boxer play. I started an alt warlock after seeing a Drakedog PvP video.
- @SvelteKumquat: Wish I could instinctively know whether you or me are outliers or representing the majority. Maybe it’s both. :)
Does WoW Fail to Give Us the Rogue Archetype We Crave?
- @madsushi: Cynwise made a great argument re: the warlock and rogue identity of being frail, evil, cowardly, cheesy. Hard sell for many.
- @SvelteKumquat: The “evil” argument is interesting; didn’t know @wowcynwise talked about that. Something about that tack feels “right” to me.
- @madsushi: Here was post: http://cynwise.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/appendix-b-the-problem-of-evil/ He also mentions the lack of warlocks in lore, rogues have the same problem.
- @madsushi: Garona is really not that important of a lore figure and Wrathion has decided to work with everyone now.
- @SvelteKumquat: Will go read the crap out of this shortly. I Assume Horde faction has enough “good” qualities to avoid the same trap?
- @wowcynwise: Oh man, that post featured “Friendship Wizards.” I still laugh about that.
- @wowcynwise: I think you’re right, Rogues have the same problem. Expecting RP parity with Pally/Druids might be unreasonable.
- @SvelteKumquat: But if what @Ghostcrawler says is true (abt rogue pop dip being since LK), then “evil” perception only goes so far.
- @SvelteKumquat: And wouldn’t it suggest games like Assassin’s Creed would be UNpopular? Evil has plenty of vg allure.
- @madsushi: AC only has to hold your attention for a few weeks, not a few years. Just a stroll down Evil Lane…
- @Ghostcrawler: I think the rogue fantasy is out there. Maybe we just don’t / can’t deliver on it. (AC fan here.)
What do you think? Does Blizzard fail to deliver a real “rogue experience”? And if so, is THAT why not enough people play them? Or is it really just about the mechanics, stupid?
I remember back in the day there was Ming blogging and a few others over at a big rogue site that got rebranded a few times. As for heroes, i guess for vids generally i always liked Perkulator as it was entrtaining with good music selection. Neilyo for some pvp. Nowadays theres very few realhigh end people who are consistent. Drakedog’s pvp vids…that was some funnystuff.
As for lore, Rogues get SI:7, the entire Ravenholdt faction and Garona. Although he is right Garona is not considered that great a lore figure really. Warlocks surely get Gul’dan…. :)
The rogue fantasy is out there, but in reality they can’t deliver on it truly. Its more of a ninja-playstyle fantasy except you can’t get assassinate (like AC etc). Blizzard lets a lot of people down on the rogue experience. Just like before when I was talking about arena, a rogue should have surprise on his/her side, you step into an arena, they know there is a rogue around, they are prepared, surprise is gone what do we get to make up for that key thing? and the answer is nothing. See the skill i suggested a few posts ago for the versatility change, that is the kind of bonus we should get, i always think if a rogue does well in arena, then he has done better than anyone else because they have won with a major factor being removed for them. Everyone else can rush headlong in, they have lost nothing(ok maybe ferals, but they can shapeshift and heal…and kite well and…etc).
A rogue used to be required to open some doors/locks in some older content, or disarm traps in icc, even that is generally missing now to prevent a non rogue containing party “missing content”. I love AC also btw, but mainly after the first one, first one is cool but got boring pretty fast.
Interestingly and this is probably a more psychological point which I think you’ll like.
I’m a pretty good guy irl, I get on with people try not to do bad by anyone live life my own way, treat others how you would like to be treated.
In WoW i am a rogue, I get to (figuratively) lie, cheat, steal, kill and generally be an all around devious person. Or well thats kind of the perception of rogue. My brother tried to play a rogue years ago but he was pretty bad at it, he just felt bad about sneaking up on people and didn’t really have the mentality to play the game in a controlled style.
Interestingly he took the below test for the game magic the gathering, its about choosing a suitable deck to suit your thinking/playstyle.
http://www.wizards.com/magic/quiz/quiz.aspx?x=mtg/quiz/guild
My brother got green/white & red/white. Which is nature/hamony/growth and life/good) or in the case of red and white (chaotic/passion and life/good). Which pretty much reflects how he is as a person.
My playstyle in gaming is very different to my playstyle in life. In that test i was Dimir. Black/Blue
The description “My Secrecy. My Advantage. My Guild.
The House Dimir seeks to control Ravnica from the shadows, gathering intelligence until the time is right for their agents to strike.”
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/productarticle.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/guilds/dimir
Sounds apt.
I don’t trust my self-analysis abilities too deeply — self-denial and self-repression are awfully effective psychological tools — but it’s a similar thing for me. (I don’t particularly equate rogues with the concept of evil, though, so I may be a weirdo in that sense.) IRL, I’m not stealthy, I don’t steal, I’m a pretty above-board guy. I don’t RP in-game, but it’s still fun to be able to explore a character that in life I am very much not. (Which may also be why my main is a lady.)
I think wordpress needs a +1 xD
For me, rogues boil down to precision. Resource management is our core aesthetic beyond any other class: how well you perform depends on how well you manage all of our interrelated resources and fit them all together.
Much like all the gears, gadgets and gizmos in a really accurate pocket watch.
I remember learning to play a rogue at a high level was like a brain teaser of maximizing your performance at any second all the time, even if it did eventually get a bit repetitive after you’d “figured it all out” to a certain degree.
From this point of view, I can see three potential issues:
1) People “solved” the class, and the clockwork became much less engrossing.
2) Spec homogenization is actively undermining the “brain teaser” element.
3) The results of excellent play are not distanced enough from the mediocre.
Which leads to three possible outcomes:
1) Eventually, people just get bored of the repetitiveness and leave.
2) Just subconsciously, the rogue community feels dumbed down.
3) The effort people played for no longer yields adequate marginal utility.
Not sure if any, all, or none of these ideas are correct.
Just thinking out loud, mostly.
But one thing I do firmly believe is that the core aesthetic of a class draws people in, and the rogue’s emphasis on stealth, control, and a high level of exacting precision simply doesn’t appeal to a wide swath of the playerbase.
I’m not attempting to glorify our class mechanics.
I’m just looking under the hood at the subconscious, fantasy appeal.
People who are compelled by rogue design are going to have different driving motivations to their play than people who play paladins, for example. And those people are the ones at Elitist Jerks and elsewhere who define the class.
If that core aesthetic no longer applies, people are going to get disillusioned.
Which leads to two interesting questions:
1) Is that core aesthetic simply an illusion that disintegrates when you touch it? I don’t think so in PvP as much, but I could see that argument for us in PvE.
And:
2) If the core aesthetic does truly exist, and if it’s being assaulted, should Blizzard defend it? Or just let it crumble, and let what will happen… happen?
A very well written post, much better than my usually walls of text.
I agree with every single point you made and I think it is actually all of them, but number three slightly weighted higher than the others.
Stealth, Control, Exacting Precision, no room for mistakes is exactly how the class needs to be played. With rogue there is no room for error. Vanish for example, combined with other abilities is an effective escape tool, but you don’t want to escape most of the time, you picked your target, you started that fight, you controlled it as much as you could and your opponent is not dead yet. So you had to escape because you were losing it.
Often it doesn’t matter if you get everything right, you can still lose a fight you picked or in the case of arena didn’t pick. The rogue has no room for errors to even be played at all properly at the moment, yet no other class has almost flawless performance yielding so little reward. I mentioned inanother post that many people might enjoy their rogue at lower levels, but once they got to top level, they quickly realised they wern’t getting the “reward” from the class they had experienced at other levels. This is because you need to get better, but better isn’t even good enough as a rogue you need to be the best you can be. I can play on my feral druid, using form shift, self heals etc and take down people I cannot take down on my much better geared rogue and not only that I can screw up a lot and still do it.
The rogue playstyle surely needs to be more complicated, not so much more buttons to press necessarily, just something so that people who play rogues and arn’t great (who knows i could be one) still do “ok”, can still play arena pvp or mid-level pve (separated as high-progression guilds generally whittle out the less competetive for their raids) and don’t feel disillusioned/disheartened, but the really good ones are well rewarded.
That balance between adequate/good/very good and awesome is just not there. Possibly if you were awesome right now you could win every single fight and have no trouble in arena if your partner is similarly gifted (for example). However this clearly isn’t the case at the moment as many of the previously high-end rogues simply arn’t cutting it this time around without being carried or have rerolled to another class they can apply the same exacting precision to, often making them very good to excellent at that alternative class. Again the rewards for exceptional play as rogues are poor.
So Blizzard should do their best to defend that core aesthetic because its not just under assault, its been reamed.